January 13, 2004

Recently I found an old book called "Report of the Superintendent of Insurance of the Dominion of Canada for the Year Ending 31st December 1890"

The book was published in 1891 in Ottawa, and included in its pages are approximately 60 pages of names of shareholders and guarantors for various Insurance and Assurance Companies across Canada & USA.

The date for the list of names is 1890 and the wonderful thing about these is that they include people from all over Canada, as well as USA and Europe.

Each individual has a residence listed, in some cases, an actual street address. What really intrigued me about these lists was that the shareholders' residences included such places as:

These lists can be used to verify that an individual lived in a certain place in 1890. They also contain quite a bit of detail for some entries, which are terrific clues for further research. Here's a few examples:

One listing is for "Edward Rawlings, Montreal" and under his name, labelled as "in trust" are the names Miss A L Rawlings, Miss E M Rawlings, Miss KNB Rawlings, George W Rawlings, HEA Rawlings, and WT Rawlings

Beside Edward's name is his number of shares in the Guarantee Company of North America - 4645, amount subscribed for 232,250, paid in cash 52,610. His children are noted as to their number of shares, amount subscribed for and amount paid up in cash - each child except Miss AL has 5 shares, 250 subscribed for and 250 paid in cash. Miss AL has 6 shares, 300 subscribed for and 300 paid in cash.

It occurred to me that this entry meant that Edward had died, and the rest of the names were his heirs, most likely his children, given the words "in trust". So I checked the online 1881 census at http://familysearch.org/ and found Edward and his family living in Montreal (Ste Antoine Ward)

They were:

Edward Rawlings b England, 41

Lucinda Rawlings b Ire. 39

Lucinda Rawlings b Que. 12 [Miss A L from the book?]

George Rawlings b Que 8 [George W from the book]

Henry Rawlings b Que 5 [HEA from the book?]

Walter Rawlings b Que 4 [WT from the book?]

Edith Rawlings b Que 2 [Miss EM from the book?]

daughter, b. Feb. 1881 [probably Miss KNB from the book]

This gives you some idea of the usefulness of this book Thanks to some wonderful volunteer transcribers I am able to bring these names to you. I hope you enjoy these names, and that you find an ancestor or two.

I'm an incurable collector of
antiques, an avid genealogist and a messy but creative cook! I blog, i write history and genealogy books. My main genealogy website is Olive Tree Genealogy http://olivetreegenealogy.com/

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